​Professor Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) of the Hebrew University – arguably the greatest Jewish scholar of the 20th century – considered himself an archeologist. No, not the kind of person who digs into the history-laden soil of Israel, but rather one who delves into the Jewish religious tradition that Scholem described as “a field strewn with ruins.”

Scholem described his life’s work as “…the modest but necessary task of clearing the ground of much scattered debris and laying bare the outlines of a great and significant chapter in the history of the Jewish religion.”